Now that MoP is over, how would you rank it against other expansions?

Pick your favourite expansion, I know this has been done many times but now that all features, raids and major content in MoP is out, it's a decent time to judge it and compare it to previous expansions.

My ranking would be Wotlk>TBC>MoP>Cata.

Please vote for your favourite in the poll for an overall picture.

I loved Wotlk the most because it had the content I enjoyed the most. Loved almost all raids, heroics but most of all, that was the last time when my friends were all still playing the game and I have the fondest memories of playing with them. MoP is okay I guess but the community is not something I fit into any more sadly. Cata was obviously the worst for a myriad of reasons, in my opinion.

I had the most fun in TBC and WotLK, but MoP is an improvement to the game in every way thinkable. I think Blizzard did a fantastic job with this expansion. The lore and PvE in particular.

(For those of you saying MoP isn't over yet, 5.5 will pretty much belong to 6.0 since it's an introduction patch to the next expansion. Proof? It hasn't been announced yet and won't be until Blizzcon.)

Even though I had most fun in TBC and early Wrath, I still feel MoP gameplay is way superior to the atrocity we had back then.
Raiding-wise, Wrath could be closer to MoP but unfortunately t7 (way too easy, except for Sarth+3) and t9 (4 resets/week, cheap design, 5 bosses) were very weak, and that's a big fail in my book. MoP content, on the other hand, was very consistent difficulty-wise and enjoyable. Even though I did not manage to finish all the content while it was current (6/6 3/6 1/4 t14hc10, 11/13 t15hc25, 2/14 t16hc25 currently), I still loved the challenge it provided.

I feel blizzard really fell short with the asian theme in a lot of places, and it all seemed overly cartoony for Blizzard. As a raider I loved the more casual content (Brawlers, scenarios, even pet battles are ok - PG's seem a bit bland), I love rares and mobs that can kill you if you don't pay attention and want to see more of this.

The legendary grind was terrible, I think I prefer glaives over this. Wrath/cata legendary system was fine... As was the amount of dps gained from legendaries (upto 25% for some specs this expansion - wtf ridiculous).

Oh and I just didn't like pandas, not because they are pandas but they are simultaneously extremely strong and successful, but also so weak and vulnerable it's a miracle they survived on pandaria even without us fucking things up.

Edit: Forgot how horrific the design for dailies at start of expansion was, I like to think blizzard agreed and thats the real reason they nuked the vale and its main daily hub.

Last edited by Raiju; 2013-10-08 at 09:37 AM.

Originally Posted by Endus

which is kind of like saying "of COURSE you can't see the unicorns, unicorns are invisible, silly."

Burning Crusade is just so much better than everything else they've released since, it's kinda sad. MoP is good though. PvP has been pretty fun and the raids are really good with unique mechanics for a lot of fights.

I feel blizzard really fell short with the asian theme in a lot of places, and it all seemed overly cartoony for Blizzard. As a raider I loved the more casual content (Brawlers, scenarios, even pet battles are ok - PG's seem a bit bland), I love rares and mobs that can kill you if you don't pay attention and want to see more of this.

The legendary grind was terrible, I think I prefer glaives over this. Wrath/cata legendary system was fine... As was the amount of dps gained from legendaries (upto 25% for some specs this expansion - wtf ridiculous).

Oh and I just didn't like pandas, not because they are pandas but they are simultaneously extremely strong and successful, but also so weak and vulnerable it's a miracle they survived on pandaria even without us fucking things up.

Shadowmourne and Dragonwrath are still the two most powerful legendaries ever though. I'm pretty sure the rogue daggers provided a higher benefit aswell.

And if Cataclysm didn't have so much scrapped I would put it in front of TBC. I wasn't that much into TBC actually, my account was active but I didn't play that much. Just the general feel of that expansion didn't speak to me, it was too alienating, pretty much my main problem with MoP as well.

If I take off my nostalgia goggles for a moment and view it objectively.

MOP - 5.1 great leveling content really enjoyed the story line and questing while I leveled. This is rare as I fucking HATE leveling. Dungeons were nice Gate of the setting sun being my fav, was a bit dissapointed in the lack of 5man content though. Scenarios were fun and I enjoyed them. Daily questing with the locked reputation gear behind them I hated this model. Legendary quest line is a huge improvement in story telling of a legendary.

LFR - splits some opinions but I think its been great on the whole. It allowed me to see raiding content with out having to go into a set raiding time table and that suited me just fine as I can play with a couple of friends and my brother in a casual raid setting. Pugs did suffer from the over tuned 10man normal content. Flex seems to be the much wanted raid mode to fill that role of pug content really want to try this out soon.

The raids them selves have all been to a great standard, the art and boss mechanics have all been great. loving the cinematic content they've added to the game.

The downsides have been some of the LFR content being affected by toxic players. Yes toxic players can be encountered anywhere in the game but nothing is more easily seen than in LFR. People seem to rage at the slightest of things, this needs to be sorted and a better way of reporting bad player behavior as well as ways of reforming players (or attempting to). Other things like cross realm zones and virtual servers should help low pop servers and I think are the future of the game if done in the right way.

All in all this expac is up there with the best. I think the issues with alts and the horrible grind of 5.1 have been fixed and hopefully lessons learned.

If I have to choose one I will go with MOP. While I loved Vanilla TBC and wrath (cata was meh for me) and I was pretty hardcore back then I can see the features and the quality of presentation has improved 10 fold in MOP. Some elements in mop failed a little bit (5man content dailies/reputation grind) but over all its got a good balance and some really nice features (pet battles) that I was unsure about that really seemed to be great.

No? Dragonwrath was fixed 10% dps increase, less than half of what we get now.

I'd say 11% due to the extra gem slots, but still, what classes do 20% more dps single target with the cape? My proc did 7% damage on Garrosh and that's with some cleave.

I can't really justify you saying that the proc does 20% on Galakras either since add dps is mostly irrelevant since it's the easy phase and high dps isn't important. Control of your dps onto the right target is more important, where Dragonwrath would help more.

I'd love a log or something where someone did 20%, even on a fight like Dark Shamans because I've never even come close to that. 13% is the highest from my Dark Shaman logs I can see, where I did 385k dps, so sure, if I would play badly and tunneled one of the bosses, maybe I would've gotten 20%.

But then again, I play my rotation well and if you just auto attack like Donald Duck, you're sure to get high % numbers with your cape. I'm sure LFR heroes get high numbers, but not people that play properly.

On topic: I agree with the daily grind. I didn't like that at all and I actually took a break because of it in 5.0-5.1.

I'm going by lore / storytelling and skipping the expansions I had the most fun as that was due to newness of the game and the guild I was in.

Wrath > Mop > TBC > Cataclysm > Classic.

In my opinion MoP has been great from a story telling point of view and has displayed excellent development by Blizzard in terms of game design however for me something about Pandaria doesn't feel right, I don;t mind the (hopefully) one off Eastern theme I just wish they had developed a different race than Panadren.

for me WoTLK>Cata>TBC>MoP
MoP wasnt that interesting for me. Old stories of corrupted guardians(mogu) old story of absorbed old god power, some random races like Jinyu, Hozen and Saurok. only Garrosh, Jaina and Wrathion storyline was enjoying for me. Even the brand new land of Pandaria wasnt that special. I didnt enjoy 85-90 lvling.
but scenarios and challenge mode was cool. more patches made average story much more dynamic. so its still good expansion.
6,5/10 for me.

WotLK > Cata > Mop >>>> TBC (didn't play in vanilla)
I think cata, mop and wrath were all good, tbc was kinda lacking, class balance was out of the planet, didn't like expansion theme and pvp was complete garbage. WotLK had best PvE content, Cata had best balanced pvp, MoP is very good overall (but not extremely good).
WotLK 10/10, Cata 9/10, Mop 8,5/10, TBC 6/10